ing, fitting and boring holes with
giant gimlets, so I asked the reason for this unwonted activity, when it
might have been reasonably supposed that the vessel had played her part
in the service, and might have been allowed to pass the remainder of her
days afloat, in an honourable retreat up the estuary on which the
dockyard stands.

But, no.

I was informed that the _Alert_ had yet many more days of Arctic
experience in store for her, our government having placed her at the
disposal of the United States authorities to take part in the relief of
Lieutenant Greeley's Polar expedition.--I may here mention in
parenthesis that the vessel subsequently successfully performed the task
committed to her substantial frame; and it was mainly by means of the
stores deposited by her in a _cache_ in Smith Sound that the survivors
of the expedition were enabled to be transported home again in safety.--
I, really, only mention the vessel's name on account of the man who told
me about her--a gentleman who entered into conversation with me about
the cold regions of the north generally, and of the escapes of ships
from icebergs in particular.

He was a seafaring man. I could see that at a glance, although he was
not one I should have thought who had donned her majesty's uniform, for
he lacked that dapper look that the blue-jackets of the service are
usually distinguished by; but he was a veritable old salt, or "shell-
back," none the less, sniffing of the ocean all over, and having his
face seamed with those little venous streaks of pink (as if he indulged
in a dab of rouge on the sly occasionally) which variegate the tanned
countenances of men exposed to all the rigours of the elements, and who
encounter with an equal mind the freezing blast of the frozen sea or the
blazing sun of Africa.

I told this worthy that once, when on a voyage in one of the Inman line
of steamers from Halifax to Liverpool, I had gone--or rather the vessel
had, to be more correct--perilously near an iceberg, when my nautical
friend proceeded to give vent to his own exposition of the "glacial
theory," saying that a lot of nonsense was written about the ice in the
Arctic regions by people who never went beyond their own firesides at
home and had never seen an iceberg. It made him mad, he said, to read
it!

"I daresay you've read a lot of rubbish on the subject?" said the old
gentleman, getting excited about the matter, as if he only wanted a good
start to